


if they send the wolves, I'll join the wolves

by paxlux



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-14
Updated: 2011-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:18:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxlux/pseuds/paxlux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like all good fairy tales, there are rules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if they send the wolves, I'll join the wolves

**Author's Note:**

> AU after Season 5.

He loses his heart to a hole in the ground.

-

Dean wastes no time. He stumbles out of the cemetery, stumbles away from his own personal armageddon.

He remembers a name scrawled in the journal in the glove compartment.

He drives to the address he could barely read.

She twirls a bird bone between two silver rings on her fingers, says, You want to bring him back?

He might’ve swallowed his tongue because he can’t talk, only nod.

You have to say it.

Yes, I want my brother back. _Now._ It’s like glass in his throat and he tastes blood. He doesn’t say please, but he hears it, ringing in his head, a knell.

This is what I can give you, she says, handing him a piece of paper.

He’s desperate, too desperate. He takes it and doesn’t look back. He doesn’t think. He thinks it will be enough.

-

Dean has to see his brother. If he can't, he has a gun. Cleaned, oiled, loaded. He knows his way around guns. It would - it will always be a gun.

He thinks it will be enough. It’s not the first time he’s been wrong.

-

Bobby makes him come to the house, you’ll do it here, boy, where I can keep an eye on you. Make sure you don’t make any more deals. Or something else so damn stupid.

It takes more blood. And fire. And by the time Dean’s done, he can’t control his hands, he’s lost all feeling beyond the teased-out current in his bones. Every piece of him calls to Sam. He burns, from the inside out. His lungs feed the bonfire.

The first time, they don’t know how it will work. All they know is they have to wait until nightfall.

Bobby watches out the window, but Dean doesn't. He drinks down the sun. He watches his shadow slip down the wall.

Then it’s dark, pitch black and Dean thinks, No hellfire. Just fucking black.

The first time, all the clocks in Bobby's house tick loudly and between one second and the next, Sam is there, standing under the devil's trap.

He stands and shakes before he falls. His legs fold under him like the paper in Dean’s fist.

It’s coming on summer, the days expanding their ribs, so when Sam doesn’t speak, Dean is impatient.

They don’t have _time for this_.

Dean, Sam finally says. Dean.

Yeah, Sammy. I got ya.

-

Like all good fairy tales, there are rules. Bobby’s the one to tell Sam because Dean can’t look him in the eye. Another reckless roll of the dice, the two of them the worst gamblers in history.

There's rules, Sam, rules.

For now, Dean says.

Sam stares at the floor. You promised.

Dean says, I haven't broken my promise. Sam is still shaking. When Dean touches him, he makes a noise, cornered, and the shakes, the noise slice clean into Dean’s palm.

You will, Sam says. You’re working on it. His eyes are the same color. There’s no way Dean was fucking forgetting already.

Like a good nightmare, Sam doesn't stop shaking even when Dean wraps arms around him, even when Sam pulls him close like a blanket. He doesn’t smell like smoke or fear and Dean is so grateful.

There are rules, reversals of fortune and grisly claiming, like blood in a glass slipper, the vicious birds in the trees with their hooked beaks.

One night a month. For as long as it’s night.

The clocks tick louder as dawn comes. The sun's about to break. Sam glances at the repaired circle of the devil's trap.

Dean realizes Sam's looking up just as his brother vanishes.

-

He spends the month drinking.

He never stays in the same town for more than two nights.

Even when he's hung over.

He drives because it's the only way he can breathe. The ugly fucking walls of the cheap motel rooms fold in and burn.

In two weeks, he gets into seven bar fights. It's becoming a regular thing. He doesn't remember if he wins or loses.

He feels all his bruises, the split to his lip. The way the alcohol burns where his teeth bit into the soft of his mouth.

His knuckles are swollen when he grabs the steering wheel.

The waitresses bring him coffee and all but run away.

-

Dean doesn't answer his phone. When he calls Bobby, he uses a pay phone.

He has saved voicemails, from Sam. He doesn’t remember doing it, but his fingers push the buttons and then Sam’s talking to him, Dean, it’s the widow, she’s doing this, she lost her daughter in the river, Dean, dude, get your ass down here, you can do your own laundry, this is some nasty shit, Dean, sorry, forgot your onion rings, you loser, since you ate my apple turnover.

It's as if Sam's calling him down. He hears the noise Sam made under the trap, wild animal hurt. He hears it in his sleep. He hears it when he’s drinking his coffee.

One night, the wrong night, he gets so drunk, he loses sight in one eye and he crookedly pencils a devil's trap on the stained motel ceiling and sits under it. He talks like maybe he’s praying. He sets a bowl of his blood on fire. It’s Sam’s blood too.

But it doesn't work.

-

Dean isn’t hunting. He loads his gun. But he doesn’t use it.

-

For the next night, in the next month, he somehow makes it back to Bobby's, letting the car lead the way. He pounds on the door and Bobby almost shoots him. Dean almost lets him.

The sun goes down.

Then Sam's there, in the devil's trap. Shaking. His skin is dark under his eyes, like he never sleeps.

Sam reaches for Dean as he loses his balance. That’s how they learn he can't leave the circle of the trap.

And Dean is broken clean through. He wants to destroy something. Slowly. Grind everything into ash. Put a bullet into someone's brain. Just line them up and sacrifice them.

But Sam just looks at him and says his name, three times in a row. Like when he was little.

So Dean sits with him, on the floor. Sam seems stronger now. Even though he’s pale, eyes like ash streaks in his face. He stops shaking. But he's warm, feverish.

Hi, Sam says.

Hey, Sammy.

Dean starts talking, about nothing, about the road, the Impala, but then Sam says, How’d you get those bruises? What the hell happened to your jaw?

I dunno, Dean says, shrugs, happy that Sam’s talking in sentences.

Stop lying, asshole. And you smell like you fell in a bottle.

Well, Dean says, shrugging.

Dean, fuck, Sam says. He keeps one hand on Dean after that, mouth tight like the old days when he’d get pissed over little niggling shit Dean did. He makes Dean tell him about the bar fights, grip going threatening through the blow-by-blows. He makes Dean find a new hunt, an easy salt and burn, wouldn’t want you to lose your pyro talents.

When the sun rises, Dean grabs Sam's wrist and Sam says, Don’t drink yourself to death, jerk.

Bitch, Dean says, I can drink death under the table. Sam laughs and Dean tightens his fingers where Sam is so warm.

But Sam still disappears.

-

Dean goes on the hunt. He digs up the grave and three times catches himself about to say something to Sam.

So he starts talking out loud. Lousy jokes. Road stories. One time, there was this girl in New Orleans. One time, there was this bar in Tennessee. One time, in Wyoming, I puked in the car. Damn greasy spoon. They had steaks for burgers.

He tells himself to remember to tell Sam.

The spirit tries to crush his skull and the world becomes a glittering menace. He might have a concussion. He almost loses his balance and falls into the burning hole in the ground.

The bones crack in the heat, ready to tell Dean’s fortune.

But he doesn’t stick around for that. There’s a bottle of whiskey with his name on it.

-

It's at night. Always at night. Only at night.

As soon as the sun dies, falling below the horizon into its grave, the clock stops.

He went back to the witch and bought it from her, when she smeared something on its gears, something like Dean's blood and Sam’s hair and blackened ash from a jar. Dean didn’t ask. Somehow, the clock knows. Or maybe Dean’s blood knows.

And time stops.

But the sun doesn’t. It comes up and Sam’s gone.

-

It isn’t enough.

-

They aren’t at Bobby’s for the next month.

Dean stays in one place long enough his skin is crawling and his bones might break free at any moment. What if it doesn’t work. What if it goes wrong. What if. If.

He pencils the trap on the ceiling.

Then Sam’s there and he’s smiling at Dean. Like nothing’s wrong. Like he’s sixteen again and they have the wind at their backs.

And Dean remembers. Hey, Sam.

One time, there was this girl in New Orleans. One time, there was this bar in Tennessee. One time, in Wyoming, I puked in the car. Damn greasy spoon. They had steaks for burgers.

You puked in the car, Sam says, in disbelief, laughing. As if he hasn’t been in a cage made of time-out-of-mind hatred. As if he’s about to get coffee and stretch his legs, then they’ll be back on the road.

The clock isn’t ticking and Sam’s laughing and his skin is alive under Dean’s fingers.

Dean, Sam says, with his never-ending seriousness.

He doesn’t have to leave the trap to kiss Dean.

Then Sam’s vapor.

-

His mouth burns as he erases the trap.

-

It’s summer, the solstice circling close, the shortest night of the year.

Dean cleanses a house, the one at the end of the street. The one nobody wants anymore.

He squats there, eating by candlelight because he’s slowly becoming nocturnal. He’s starting to see better in the dark.

He draws a huge trap, the circle like he’s winding Sam closer, spiraling him up from the depths.

He doesn’t think about Sam’s kiss.

He only thinks about the shortest night of the year and what he’ll say.

It seems like for all their lives, the only thing they’ve ever really said is goodbye.

Sam always said they weren’t made for this. They weren’t made to be sad.

They weren’t made for goodbye.

-

When Sam appears, there isn’t any noise. Dean’s ears don’t pop. There isn’t a shush or displacement of air.

He’s there. And he’s bruised.

Got in a bar fight, Sam says, smirking, wincing as Dean’s fingers grab his jaw, turn him this way and that.

The hell you did, Dean says.

Just skinned my knee.

His hands tremble, he doesn’t shake like he did the first time, but his hands give him away.

Sammy.

Look at all this space, Sam says, arms out, like it’s the whole wide world. So what’d I miss.

Fuck you, Dean says, and the only light anywhere is from the candles he scrounged out of the trunk, the only light anywhere and he suddenly can’t see Sam, he’s so angry.

Dean, c’mon, Sam sighs.

The shortest night, they don’t have time for this, and Sam chases him down within the trap.

Mine, Sam says, my time, this is it. So what’d you wanna say.

Sammy.

Yeah.

And there is nothing to say. Dean gets a hand on Sam, because this is their shared hell, here in the summer black. His palm slips to the furnace heat of Sam, where his hair curls at the tips and Sam sighs again. Like he used to, sleeping in the car, body swaying with the turns of the road.

You gotta stay, Sam, Dean says, then he fucking hates that he said it.

You promised, Sam says, using Dean’s hold on him to lean, let Dean take his weight.

And up close, Dean can see that Sam doesn’t sleep, that the bruise along his cheekbone is fresh, purple and deep. He’s bitten his lip and bled.

What’d you wanna say, Dean says.

Sam shakes his head, hair tickling Dean’s skin where they’re bent together, pulled like magnets.

A candle goes out with a hiss.

Dean’s becoming nocturnal, he can see in the dark, and Sam’s watching him, a small curl to his mouth.

So Sam starts to talk, random stuff, when he stole one of Dean’s t-shirts on his way to college, the time behind the Motel 6 when the maid sucked a hickey onto his neck, when the vending machine died and gave him free Cokes, don’t you remember when we did laundry and bleached the hell outta those jeans, you want good biscuits, man, you gotta go to the South, remember, hey, did you know, there’s a silver dollar hidden in the car, Dean, did you know.

This is what it’ll be like, Dean thinks, this until he dies, calling up Sam like a ghost through a witch’s skull, closing his eyes until another month goes by and he slowly loses the daylight.

He rubs a thumb over the bruise on Sam’s face and Sam goes quiet, eyes flaring and the candles jump in response.

The two of them the only light anywhere in the shortest night of the year.

He fits his mouth over Sam’s and that’s not a candle.

That’s sunlight.

-

His brother sounds like he’s losing his voice, like it’s almost been choked out of him.

Sam says, You gotta do three things for me.

One. You gotta keep hunting. I know you. You don’t set fire to something, well, I can’t be held responsible for what happens.

Two. Stop with the fucking drinking, Dean. You wind up in a ditch somewhere, swallowing your teeth or or or you hit some dead man’s curve and I’ve got all of eternity to hate you.

Three. You gotta.

He stops and Dean says, What.

You gotta.

Spit it out, just say it.

But Sam looks away, and with the loss of his eyes, Dean is cut loose.

Stay, Dean says.

Yeah, that might be it, his brother says.

-

All he sees is Sam, as if he’s clairvoyant.

And he realizes after all these years, what this tug inside him is, this background ache he’s held for so long.

All he sees is Sam. In every way.

-

Finally, it all becomes inevitable.

Sam kisses him again on the autumnal equinox, as the nights are getting longer and they have more time.

So they have more time and Dean is tired of waiting and he kisses back, deep, until their mouths are red.

They fuck under their devil’s trap, the one Dean carries in his head around the country, because nothing is home until Sam’s with him under the circle with its damnable symbols.

Dean stares up at the lines he drew, Sam licking over the slow pulse in his throat.

But Sam pulls back, angry, tangled in Dean and says, What the hell is wrong with you.

He means Dean’s heartbeat, how it’s faint and fluttering, makes Dean shake sometimes. Sam’s fingers press hard to find it, creating stabbed bruises.

What did you do, Sam says again, naked and furious and Dean flinches.

It takes blood, Sammy, and I.

Fuckin’ say it, Dean.

I’m borderline. Almost dead. For the hours while you’re.

Alive, he wants to say. Here, he wants to say. Mine.

Sam rolls off him, taking his heat with him and Dean stares up at the lines he drew.

There are rules, Sam.

-

He knows Sam isn’t sleeping.

He stops sleeping, living on bitter coffee. He starts seeing the dead, every day, muddied as if they’re underwater. He sees the dead, going through the motions, endless Sisyphean repetitions, walking as if they’ll never rest.

It started when this thing with Sam started, this summoning, this this this visitation, as if Sam’s haunting him.

Except Sam isn’t dead. And that’s a thousand lifetimes worse.

He does see the sky. On the day, the appointed day, the one marked with Dean’s blood and the glass-shard words from his lips, clouds roll in, green and unhappy, like before a tornado, thunderheads taking over. As if the sky knows something unnatural is going to happen in the dark.

Dean thinks it could be them with their hands on each other, this other thing with Sam, the way Sam says his name and opens his jeans, the way he has to feel Sam’s skin beneath his, and how Sam’s eyes catch him like hooks.

Dean thinks it could be them or it could be him breaking laws to see his brother again, just for another night, and another, and another.

-

That smile of Sam’s, it breaks him clean through.

-

He hunts, just like Sam said. He hunts and kills the evil that needs killing and burns down what he can. It feels good in a way he didn’t think he’d ever get back.

Trust Sam to know what Dean needed.

He hunts without rest and the cashiers don’t look at him when he buys salt and matches, the waitresses don’t look at him as they pour his coffee, slide across a slice of pie.

When the highway takes him, he goes.

-

Sam’s mouth is open, wet against Dean’s temple and Dean holds his wrists down, over his head, pushing Sam into the floor with his weight.

It will probably give him nightmares to have Sam disappear from underneath him, but he gave up on sleep, so he doesn’t fucking care.

Orange sky, and.

Sam flickers, like an out-of-body experience, flickers against Dean’s body and he squeezes his eyes shut, no no no.

Sam, what’re you.

He flickers again, then stays and the sun is climbing fast into the sky.

What the hell, oh fuck, _what’re you doing_ , Dean says, scared like he’s never been before, this is going to cost too much.

I’m staying, Sam says. After everything else I’ve done, I can do this.

He’s in pain, eyes shut tight, his jaw clenched, pain like every time Dean’s sewn him back together or raced to the hospital or scrabbled to get Sam’s blood back inside him, and Dean shakes him, No, Sam, no, stop it, let it go, let it go, I’ll see you again, you know that.

Sam twists, coiled, as if he’s fighting invisible hooks and chains.

No.

So stubborn, Dean’s little brother, stubborn in life and death and.

The sun is bright outside, burning clear, and Sam’s the same, burning clear into Dean, muttering jumbled Latin and I’m staying I’m staying I’m staying.

There are rules, Sam. _Fuck._ You, don’t you do this, you’re gonna.

What rules, Dean, c’mon, Sam hisses between his teeth. What rules are you using to call me every month. You fucking bleed yourself to do it!

Sammy, stop, please stop.

Sam flickers again, so hard Dean can feel it under his skin.

You said ‘please,’ Sam says, surprised.

Then he’s gone.

-

He isn’t drinking, like Sam asked, so he does dream. Though he thinks he isn’t sleeping.

He dreams, waking visions sometimes, spiders coming down from the ceiling, hands reaching over the headboard for his face, little cracks in the world he can see through.

It feels like he’s changing. His teeth feel sharper in his mouth when he runs his tongue over the ridges and once, his jaw slips, he bites himself and bleeds.

He didn’t tell Sam everything.

-

Sam wraps fingers around his arm and says, It’s cold here.

And Dean wants to ask if it’s cold down there, if there are cold bars that Sam is thrown against because he has bruises again, more, a lot more, so they take their careful time as the nights grow longer.

-

One month, Dean passes out. He comes to with his face resting on Sam’s thigh, the rough scrape of denim and his jeans smell like Sam, like every day of their lives.

He didn’t tell Sam how the longer nights take more blood.

Sam says, Passed out from sheer excitement, eh. I know, I’m a huge draw. A real crowd-pleaser.

Sam, you have no idea, Dean says before he kisses his brother.

-

He goes back to the witch. This isn’t enough, it’ll never be enough, he was too stupid and desperate to begin with.

She tilts her head, her ponytail brushing one shoulder. You shoulda thought of that when you first came here, she says.

I know.

You said you wanted your brother back. You didn’t say for how long.

I know, Dean says, calm, even though he’s ready to put a bullet into her breastbone.

All right, you can try this. Might wanna do a little reading first.

She smiles at him, a bird bone in her fingers, tiny bite marks on the white and her cat purrs on the counter by her elbow. Her eyes look black when she turns to get another piece of paper for him.

Dean says, I’ve got time.

-

He does his research, reads about blood and what it’ll take. All the old fairy tales had it right. All the old stories about taking hearts, taking eyes and hands, voices and animal-by-day, human-by-night, what about teeth and knives in your feet, what else can you sacrifice.

It takes so much more than anyone ever thought.

-

Sam’s bruised now whenever he appears. He tries to hide it, but Dean finds out.

He runs his fingers over them.

You look like shit, Sam says.

Look who’s talking, princess, Dean says.

They’re angry at each other, bristling, then Sam says, Sleep helps.

Knock me out, then. One punch, Dean says.

-

His mouth is sparking in the dark, Dean can see it, Sam’s teeth so white against Dean’s skin, in an abandoned house, candles and the largest devil’s trap Dean’s ever made, their trap.

His brother is whispering against his body, making fortune-teller promises and iron-chain oaths as he winds fingers into Sam’s soft hair.

They’re slick with sweat and Sam’s going slow, excruciating, and Dean says, I need something from you.

For what.

You’ll see.

Sam sighs, hot breath along Dean’s ribs and he shivers, proof of life.

There’s a silver dollar in the car, Dean, I hid it, did you know.

-

Each time, Dean’s heart almost stops.

Like the clock. It doesn’t keep time.

The clock knows because Dean’s blood knows.

-

His brother shakes his hair out of his eyes and says, Did you know that it hurts.

What. What hurts.

Sam stares at the ceiling, then shrugs. Never mind.

Dean almost says, Yeah, I think I know. It hurts that he drives fast to keep the road noise loud. It hurts when his fingers curl around the guns. It hurts now when he swallows his coffee. It hurts when he showers. It hurts when he opens his eyes. It hurts to talk. It hurts that Sam’s in a fucking cage because he loves his brother.

I can feel it. Dean. I can feel it when you cut yourself, Sam says, palm coming to rest between Dean’s shoulder blades.

I don’t feel it anymore, Dean says.

-

Winter solstice. Longest night of the year. They’ll never have more time than tonight.

The piece of paper isn’t vague and doesn’t sugarcoat anything. Brutal honesty. Thank ye kindly.

Dean finds the silver dollar, slipped into a book, mashed into a corner of the trunk. He flips it a few times, betting himself.

Heads, I’ll bring back Sam for good. Tails, I’ll bring back Sam for good.

The winter solstice will be enough to make him pass out, but the piece of paper says that the rest of it, bringing Sam back, that might bleed him out. If he’s not strong enough. Not strong enough for his brother.

Sam might break him clean through.

Just like his smile.

-

There’s a snapping sound, like wolves in the trees.

He sits cross-legged under their trap. The only light anywhere and his teeth feel sharper, crowded in his mouth.

His hand sweats where he holds the silver dollar and he smiles, thinks, No place like home.

Tonight, he’ll cut between the scars.

His heart slows down and each time he bleeds, it’s like going to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and tidbits from “An Army Of Lovers Cannot Fail” by Lovers.


End file.
